Long Road To Ruin
by Jada Ryl
Summary: During The Experimental Job, Eliot remembers what brought him to Moreau.  Written for a prompt at comment fic.  SPOILERS!


**Disclaimer:** I don't own Leverage. I'm not making any money of of this. I am a poor college student. So, please, don't bother suing me. You can't get blood from a stone.

**Warnings:** mentions of torture, implied noncon, spoilers for The Experimental Job

**Author's Notes:** Constructive criticism is welcome. Flames will be given to Parker for her bomb habit.

Eliot looked the arrogant son of a bitch in the eyes. There was a reason he had tried to keep the team away from his past working for a terrorist. It wasn't just because he didn't want them to know about what he'd done, about all the people he'd killed in cold blood. It wasn't even because they could be killed. No one knew what Damien Moreau had cost him. He wanted it to stay that way. More than that, he'd wanted to make sure that his team, his new family, never had to go through that. To his relief, they had come through to the other side, safe and victorious. And now here he was, nearly a year later, listening to this ignorant, know-it-all asshole claim that torture doesn't work.

None of the others knew how he'd started his career as a retrieval specialist. They all thought he'd been discharged from the military. He laughed bitterly to himself. There had been no discharge. Just a joint mission with the CIA gone badly wrong. It had seen so simple at the time. Infiltrate the terrorist organization and then assassinate the leader. Only thing was, everything had gone wrong. The mission was covert, not clandestine, thanks to the CIA. Certifiably Insane Assholes. The CIA guys had gotten out. He and his unit hadn't. No, the government wanted plausible deniability, so they were left behind, branded as a rogue unit. They'd been trained to withstand torture but there were somethings that no amount of training could prepare you for.

He'd been one of six. They'd been kept in one small cell together. Moreau had gone for Chapman first. After a couple weeks, they didn't return him. Eliot figured his friend had died under torture. Then they'd gone for Reese. A few weeks later, Eliot found himself holding his unit-mate's body as it grew cold. Campbell had killed himself after telling them what Moreau wanted from them. And so it went until only Eliot was left. He hadn't had much left to fight with by then. Sometimes seeing your team tortured and killed was worse than being tortured yourself.

Eliot nearly smirked. He'd known. He'd known before he left that cell that Moreau wanted his Navy SEAL training. He'd looked the man in the eyes and seen his ruin written there the moment the mission went south. He closed his eyes, fighting to not get completely lost in the memories. Chapman had been one of the guards who escorted him to Moreau. "I told him to save you 'til last," the man had whispered in his ear as they walked down the hallway. He still felt the bile rise in his throat at the memory. His friend, his brother-in-arms, had sold them out. He'd decided then and there that somehow, he'd get back to DEVGRU and tell them what really happened. He also vowed to himself that he'd never work with a team again. It left him too vulnerable.

He had fought. For over a month, he'd fought to live, to keep the commitment he'd made when he joined the Navy SEALs. But Moreau was just that good and there were somethings no man could withstand forever. He would never be able to forget being held down, completely helpless, completely at the mercy of Moreau's sadistic whim. For all that Chapman and the other lackeys had free reign to torture him, Moreau reserved some things for himself alone. A matter of ownership, Eliot guessed. Eventually, he'd broken. He'd become just another hired gun in exchange for even a semblance of control, for the right to not be touched against his will again. He'd become the best fighter, the best assassin in the field. He'd had to. He knew all too well the price Moreau would extract for failure.

And then he'd broken again. Not that he regretted that. The day had finally come where he could no longer pull the trigger on some innocent just to save his own ass. Not that he'd admitted that to Moreau. He wasn't completely stupid. No, he'd concocted some pathetic excuse about working alone and weasled his way out. Not that Moreau had just let him go. No, he'd made sure to give Eliot a reminder that, even though Eliot was on his own, he'd never be his own man again. It had taken years to work his way past that. He'd finally sent a letter with the real story to his commanding officer in DEVGRU before leaving San Lorenzo.

Eliot brought his attention back to his interrogator. "Depends on the torture; depends on the man," he said quietly.


End file.
